


in stiff battle harness chained to the world, against the low sun racing

by IronCladFeatherFeet (handschuhmaus)



Series: Sea Sands and Tallgrass: the end of civil war [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - no Palpatine family massacre, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asexual Obi-Wan Kenobi, Everybody Lives, Light S&M, Nobledark, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Qui-Gon Jinn as an attractive gap in the latticework of relationships, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi sort of, Sith prog rock trash, ace and/or aro spectrum characters, among many other differences!, as in a garbage galaxy but one with people who sometimes do decent things, attempted make up sex, everyone has confusing affections for everyone else, everyone is just as upset with each other as they are in some kind of love, non-con/dub-con kissing and non-sexual touching, not working well with other Naboo, relationship tags may be queerplatonic, trying to mend relationships, trying to use sex for political purposes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 00:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19139929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/IronCladFeatherFeet
Summary: Much is lost, and what is bought, for the price of four limbs?A delegation goes to Serenno, to negotiate an end to one rebellion, with another biding its time, waiting in the wings for even its debut...And yet they are bound now, loosely, these people, in a fraught and compelling constellation





	in stiff battle harness chained to the world, against the low sun racing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluedragoninamber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedragoninamber/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Snarling, Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774454) by [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs). 



> scenario vaguely related to [ _future_ ] chapters (oh dear) of Divergence of Sequences and Series, but not the same universe, either. And this is not tremendously important to the work.

Anakin Skywalker, once Jedi knight, is hanging his head in a rose garden. The fragrance, and the breeze, drift through what small openings exist in his shiny new face plates. The garden is one of many that is the pride of the Dooku estates, and little would he have expected that the rose garden of Count Dooku would be this lightly pruned, very natural, and slightly baroque.

It is both hard to process and not, that he lives on after Mustafar. He is the Hero with No Fear, and now he has no natural limbs, but how could even Mustafar kill him, how could betrayal shatter his heart but actually go on to stop it from pumping; he is the Chosen One and Palpatine cannot leave him to die and _he_ is a tainted allegiance but the only rock upon which Anakin can now build, the Jedi having rejected him. The Sith won't want him for always, either. No one does, no one ever has.

Except maybe Padme, Padme whom he cannot save, Padme who loves the Republic as Anakin has only ever loved people and whom his dreams tell him is still perhaps in horrible danger, but no: the war is to end here, in rose gardens (the Republic's enemy's) untouched by it, via a strange cast of shattered heroes, and...are some of them villains now? 

A delegation of two Naboo, the Senate Chairbeing, Chancellor Mothma's right-hand man; and the Senator proper, Padme Amidala, once Queen who withstood an embargo upon her world. Whether because of history--the queen's with the Trade Federation that would later spark off the war in their alliance, or Palpatine's, somehow, with the fallen Jedi who is Count Dooku and... somehow also Sith?, or because Naboo is thought to be of similar disposition to Serenno as a planet, or because Chancellor Mothma trusts her friend and her immediate emergency successor in the Senate with the vital task of ending the war...

In any case, the two Naboo are not tremendously friendly these days. 

And the two Jedi heroes who have committed betrayals, Skywalker named Darth Vader, and the Negotiator, brother who betrayed him.

* * *

Padme is heavily pregnant and resents every one of her traveling companions: 

Palpatine, the Elder (so-called for rejecting any name but that and being older than the actual head of House Palpatine), for being mixed up in all this, for not keeping with Naboo traditions, for lavishing this terrible and makeshift remedy on Anakin, for orchestrating this very mission in the first place;

Obi-Wan, for not knowing how to respond to Anakin's fits of anxiety and for not knowing how to deal with the gift of her _husband's_ heart, one he cannot help offering, for being a Jedi, really, when that entails a lack of attachments;

and even Anakin Skywalker(-Nabarrie), for loving too hard, too ardently, too protectively, for half destroying himself and only returning to her through Palpatine's capricious grace, for being too scared to think straight over the fate of this child...

Well, the child, who is surely about to pop out, is only guilty of making her back hurt and her bladder annoyingly insistent, and the stock of olives she laid in because she can scarcely stand the taste of anything but these past few months.

* * *

"This," snarls Dooku, regarding the Jedi in cuffs before him, "is not the way any such bargain is meant to go." 

And Sidious evades his glare. "You want him." he states, evasively, and then demands, as if he is not the orchestrator of this situation, "Because he is so highly principled?" 

Kenobi glares ferociously at the count, chewing on his bottom lip as if intent on drawing blood. 

So Yan undoes the cuffs (they seem to have relied on either the impairment of his hands and constant surveillance, or the Force-suppressant property; they are not locked) and greets him, passions high whether they are familial or what, palming the ginger hair from cheek to temple and--and kissing him; it is absurd but perhaps it is redemption from the lockstep of the Jedi and perhaps it is circuitous affections on Qui-Gon Jinn's account--it is chaste and closed mouth but it is exactly to that abused lower lip, as if the boy's injury and so many more can be soothed thereby. Not--not that he ever kissed Qui-Gon Jinn--for they had never met when Yan was no Jedi and no longer shackled to the subjugation and concealment of human affection.

But Kenobi pulls back, of course, and Palpatine is looking at him with ...disgust. 

Which disappears as soon as he spots it, and he grabs Kenobi's hand firmly and Palpatine says, dryly, "You still have a former queen to receive, whom I must recommend you don't greet in that way." 

He glares at Palpatine, whom he would never dare to adore (furthermore it is obvious that, whatever the purpose of _this_ charade, Skywalker is brighter and better and _younger_ and will occupy whatever real estate remains in that cold heart), and allows "No, I expect not."

* * *

Everything hurts just now, almost sweetly, like acid and heat in the mouth eating hot sauce, but it is scarcely physical. Obi-Wan Kenobi does not feel at all grounded as a Jedi in this moment, probably not helped by the recent presence of Force-Suppressant cuffs, but he seems only barely tethered to reality, and the pain is that main undercurrent that stops him from dissolving into soft-edged clouds. The light and near unbearable touch of the Count over his skin just a moment ago lingers electrically, and his hand in his master's once master's is gripped slightly too tight but he barely dares to protest and now: Padme.

_Why?_ he wants to ask, _Why is it that Anakin must love you, why did you give him leave to make physical proof of it, why would I have chosen my order over my brother to the extent of abandoning him, why should I_ want _to love your child...ren so hard my heart aches?_

And he can't formulate all the questions he would like to ask Dooku, even though his hate (but not the resentment for ...wanting Obi-Wan) seems to be dissolving like an ice pop lying on the pavement in summer, or Palpatine, for being what he has never been able to towards Anakin and wanting things that probably are not the best for him and yet, coming out here having done far less wrong to Anakin than has Obi-Wan, unless death really would have been a mercy, which he can't quite believe.

"Count Dooku," Padme says, and he can think but not explain exactly how he could have thought she and Anakin were not so damningly involved; she is a career politician and regal and diplomatic as could be. 

This time, Dooku only bends and kisses her hand, aristocratically, and the thrum of his heart over this whole business is somehow allowed to calm slightly.

* * *

"You do not give your apprentice an apprentice," Dooku hisses, trying to show Palpatine to his room, the one mandated by diplomacy, so he can refresh himself before dinner. Of course, this is strictly a comment on Sith ways, not on the Jedi, where it had been exactly what Qui-Gon Jinn once did, to the men they are now debating claims over.

The smaller man shrugs, almost apologetically--he has seemed to shrink into an ordinary person in this one instance of their being alone together--and instead of an explanation, philosophically offers "Some say love may not be so different from hate." 

"That explains nothing," and for some reason the anger he had forced down after Qui-Gon's death is boiling up unbidden, " _you_ are the one who would adhere to Bane, you are the one for whom there are only _two_."

"Am I?" Palpatine asks, in that infuriatingly mild way of his. 

And then they overhear, from the room two doors down, assigned to Kenobi, "I hate you! I love you!" from the mouth of Anakin Skywalker, and that gives Dooku pause.

Kenobi breaks into loud shuddering sobs "How can you _love_ me? What have I _done_?" he yells in anguish, as if he must drown out the overwhelming emotion.

"I'm not sure it's a favor I've done you," Palpatine says, sounding worn and ordinary and even pained. And trying to get answers from Sidious seems a less fruitful endeavor than whatever insurance he can construct that Skywalker and Kenobi, the Jedi dream team, are not trying to kill each other.

* * *

Anakin Skywalker ~~will be the death of him~~ is somehow the conduit through which everyone else in this place affects him, and now he's in terrible shape and it's _Obi-Wan's fault_. How do you carry that weight, how do you bear the thought that the worst thing that ever happened to the living person you probably love the most is your doing? And all because the Jedi are supposed to be wise! Supposed to be good! Supposed to know best, even when best somehow involves killing your _brother_. Because there isn't supposed to be any emotion; it's not supposed to matter any more than any random detail about say, Grievous might, that he is your brother-son and the only now living love of your life.

He might as well be a Sith, he supposes, and not just half because the warmth of _Count Dooku's_ touch seems to linger, without the layers of guilt and hurt and mourning that tarnish the heartstrings tying Anakin Skywalker to Obi-Wan Kenobi. And, through his apprentice, to Chairbeing Palpatine, to once-queen Padme Amidala. As if all people not proceeding through the linkage of the Jedi lineage are now on dim, narrow paths, overgrown and unpromising.

And so he staggers from the room, heedless of the man he loves, realizing _that_ only now, so terribly, and finds Count Dooku, to whom he has been delivered, in whom he might seek obedient oblivion for a while. "I have fallen, I swear I have," he chokes out, and falls to his knees before the man who was the closest thing to father to one who loved Obi-Wan, who has been their enemy in this world, and sets his forehead against the thigh beneath the black tabard, as if Dooku can now command him to do anything. His resistance has crumbled, he has slipped, with horrifying ease and lack of recognizable landmarks, over to the role he has been asked to play, somehow, _given_ to Dooku as... student? He has no moorings now, and expects any horror, any task, to be made to kiss the man's feet...

But Dooku only says, in the same tired tone he used sometimes, decades ago, with Qui-Gon, the one meaning _you are trying my patience, my beloved boy_ "Obi-Wan... Please don't oblige me to sit on the floor with you. My knees no longer care for it, I'm afraid."

"I am attached, Dooku, I love him," he recites, confesses heedlessly, even though that might be practically suicidal. Nothing is tethering him down now, even if he is sinking, but it is not to earth and might as well be into an abyss, where the Separatists he had devoted his life to fighting, the obedient Jedi, until the council decided to pit him against Anakin, even in _his_ follies, would be his only human contact. 

The count scoffs softly, and despite his previous words, sinks to the floor and gathers Obi-Wan in his arms, much as Qui-Gon might have. "I know, my foolish boy, and I don't know why you chose to join me for it." Well, he had had no choice in the matter, but somehow the command, from Mothma and Palpatine, came down easier than that worst edict of his life that now dominated and had ruined everything, because he had to go and love Anakin.

Dooku strokes a hand through his hair and it is surely meant to be soothing but he at once wants and loathes the touch. Obi-Wan panics, jumping back, because he wants human contact and he had been so ready to abase himself and now he cannot bear to be indebted to his once enemy and almost family for the kindness.

* * *

The state dinner is curiously intimate for such an occasion; for whatever reason (perhaps the nature of the overtures they are ...here for) it is only Dooku and his household hosting them, no committee of Separatists, but it is also extraordinarily tense, perhaps the worst dinner for that Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, has ever experienced. Matters are not helped by his reluctance to expose his mutilated face to the company at large, especially his wife, and Dooku, and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan who did this to him, who left him there on hellish banks because well...

He _had_ worked himself into a frenzy over his fear for Padme and also the fact that now the Jedi were coming after them because...

Well, because his friend Palpatine had loosed the safety switch on their clone armies, unseated the strict obedience programming in favor of proposing the question, what have the Jedi ever done for us? And the secret Order 66, a match to the kindling of ...he had realized it only then, slave minds ("What are you doing?!" "Why do you own us, why did you _make_ us?"), setting them ablaze with the whisper of freedom, had wrecked havoc on the Jedi just when they thought they had Grievous to ground and were about to organize another rally against Dooku.

And he joined in with the Clones, turning against his fellow Jedi, because he knew the nature of it thanks to a comm message... and strangely, the droids, or perhaps their commanders, did not take advantage of the opportunity, but the Jedi had... had realized that, in the sleepless blur of battle and panic over his wife and the whole world being overturned and Palpatine doing something that was ...right? but also offering him help for Padme and, somehow proving to be a Sith? Anakin Skywalker had turned irrevocably against the institution that was the Jedi Order and somehow became something to be hunted down when he had no way of stopping a revolution, of proving to himself that the Republic was entirely in the right... which complicated things immensely with Padme

but wasn't near so important here and now as the fact that he had had to be fitted with all these prosthetic limbs, in Palpatine's generosity, after Mustafar, after _Obi-Wan_ ...a slave dedicated to his own enslavement, in some terms, had turned against him and left him to _die_...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more of the tagged stuff will come up in the next chapter... (which is at least half done, I should think)


End file.
